How I Increased My Newsletter Signups By 150% In 3 Minutes

In the blog world, your #1 resource for traffic and making money online is your list. While some are hesitant to start an email newsletter, the fact remains that if you want to be successful online, it is a necessity…not an option. Since the number of targeted subscribers to your list directly correlates to your success online, bloggers like myself are always testing new ways to get people to signup. Up to this point, a Lightbox Hover has been the highest converting method to convert casual readers into newsletter subscribers and long time readers and…as you have probably noticed…the lightbox hover on RobbSutton.com has drastically changed.

How I Increased My Newsletter Signups by 150% and Higher

It shouldn’t be surprising that people really protect their email address online. With as much spam that hits our inboxes on a regular basis, online security has become a growing problem over the years. As an online entrepreneur/blogger, it is your job to show professionalism and poise when asking for email addresses. So…your first impression is everything in converting that causal first time reader into a subscriber and first impressions all come down to design.

Unfortunately for most bloggers, design is one area that is often too expensive or overlooked in the pursuit of online superstardom and even though Aweber has made drastic strides in making lightbox hovers, you still do not have a high converting, easy to setup design process that will drastically help you grow your blog…

Until now…

A friend of mine in the blogging world, Michael Dunlop, hit me up to start testing a new plugin that is now available to the public. PopupDomination is an extremely easy to configure plugin that takes your newsletter subscription service (I use Aweber) and inserts that into a fantastic Lightbox hover that goes live on your blog. While I was going to throw up some screenshots of how I configured this plugin in 3 minutes and had it live on the sites, I thought it would be better to just show you with this short video.

Extremely cool plugin, Robb.
I agree, having a highly professional look with everything associated with your site just makes a great impression. This really has a totally custom look to it. I’ve been undergoing a makeover on my site recently and this fits right in. Thanks for the post. 🙂

My question is what is the next best way to get subscribers without using a pop-up. I’m not sure I could use something on my site that I loathe to see on others. This includes your sites, sometimes I’m like “Damn what is happening now?” as I go to read something.

Maybe I would have a different outlook if I actually wanted to subscribe to something on a particular site?

Jason…I wish there was a better way but there really isn’t. I have tested EVERYTHING else and the lightbox is the highest converter by a mile every time. Like you…I don’t like to see a lot of hovers on sites, so I only display mine once.

After reading through your newsletter series I have another question. Where does this leave the people who have subscribed to posts by RSS? Would you send them an email asking them to subscribe to your newsletter? I know these are two different things but believe my readers may get confused.

I am really not a big fan of the pop up light box but I have to admit taht I am starting to be turned.
I just came from Michael’s site was reading about the plugin and then came over to see what you had to say about it. The two of you clearly know what you are talking about so I think it is time I stopped pretending I knew what I was talking about and followed the pros!

Thanks for an indepth review, I will be starting my email list next week so figured I may as well install it from the offset so that my readers know what to expect.

Feedback has been great. The 1 or 2 people that have ever said anything do not amount to the thousands that are glad they signed up through the hover. I only show it once, so it isn’t like they are getting bombarded with the hover on every visit.

That said, I have always designed my own hovers and imported them into Aweber, so generally they looked better than everyone else’s off the bat. But…this plugin is converting MUCH better. My opt-ins have doubled.

I’m building a site that will have several product pages and I’ll be doing direct linking to those pages (link building, PPC, etc.) as well as the homepage. I’d like to offer separate ebooks/downloads for some of the product pages. So here are my questions: Can Popup Dominator render popups on more than one page? And, can you have different versions of each popup?